Who Am I?

"Who do you think you are?". It's a question we ask of someone we think needs to come down a notch or two...

Read Matthew 16:13-28. One minute they're having a pleasant walk together, enjoying each others company. The next, Jesus is talking about the end of the world, shouldering your cross and throwing away your life for His sake.

"Who do you think I Am?" is the question Jesus asked to them. Peter replied "You're the Messiah". It wasn't the pat answer from the head. It was straight from Peter's heart. No-one had taught Peter that - he just knew. Jesus told Peter that God had revealed that truth to Peter. Peter felt great. "I must be something special, a bit ahead of the others" he thought to himself.

So when Jesus switched the conversation to the dark and disturbing, Peter thought he would encourage Jesus and change topics - "You shouldn't say things like that", he told Jesus.

Jesus turned and said to Peter very sternly "Satan, get behind me". In other words you're going ahead of me - your pride is taking over. You're getting too big for your boots. You're speaking for Satan!!!

Quite frankly following Jesus IS disturbing. One moment cruising along, life's wonderful, you got the the inside knowledge, "Praise God I'm Saved". The next, some sin, some little scripture, the horror of thinking you are lost, cut off from God, without hope. You don't believe me, read the Psalms! I know that's how Peter would have felt.

It's not easy! You do have to give up your life, take up your cross and follow Him. Peter had given up everything to follow Jesus. He naturally felt good about himself because his life measured up. That was until Jesus was arrested. When the time came, Peter failed so badly, he felt lost forever.

He nearly forgot that one crucial thing. Jesus loved him. That's what picked Peter up, strengthened him and kept him going until the end.

The Kauri Tree

When I was young, my Dad planted a Kauri tree in our back garden. I can remember being disappointed at how slow it was to grow. Some Kauri trees are huge and are believed to be over a 1000 years old. But that's a long time to wait. Too long. I knew that I would never live to see it grow to any real height, I'd much rather have put a bush in...at least then I could see something happening.

Every Christian has read the challenge Jesus gave to the Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 19:16-30 to sell all that he had and come and follow Him.

We recently were privileged to have Murray Smith tell us his story of how he and his wife Michelle gave all that they had away...their newly built $1.3 million dollar home...so that a new Community Centre could be built.

I know it is meaningless to invest in the material things of this World when it is all going to dust. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I can be effective for God's Kingdom which will last beyond my lifetime. The things I do though, don't seem to grow very quickly. My work seems very small. Maybe that's because I haven't taken enough risks, haven't given up everything. I worry about that. But I do know my life in Jesus' hands is like the Kauri tree. It might not be visible to the eye, but it is growing.

Risky Business

You know the saying - “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. What does it mean? What about the saying “I’m in over my head”?

A few weeks ago I was away with the Church Youth Group at Mt Mauganui on a Camp. We had a great time together – climbing the mountain, eating, learning, watching a movie outdoors and because the weather was so good, a lot of swimming…at the pools, in the river and in the sea. I wanted to join in at the beach so I went out into the surf with my glasses on, planning to only go in as far as my waist. However, because it was a lot of fun, I slowly went further and further out until eventually I was swimming and jumping to get over the waves. A lot more fun, but obviously more risky. Someone asked me if I should be out there with my glasses on... a first warning. Shortly after a wave came and just lifted my glasses slightly off my ear. A second warning which I again ignored. That’s good I thought; they aren’t going to fall off easily, so I went a bit further out. The next wave was a very big one. It came in and swamped me, knocking me over…and as I stood up I found I couldn’t see. Yes stupidly my glasses had been lost in the ocean! Despite a great search, they were lost. I spent the rest of the weekend depressed :(

Life is more fun if there is danger and risk involved. We take risks for the reward.

There is good risk and there is bad risk. Even with a good risk sometimes we will bomb out and we’ll suffer the consequences but we can learn from our failures. Next time we’ll achieve something great. For example, Thomas Edison failed a lot of times (some say more than 1000) to make the light bulb. It cost him a lot of time and money but eventually he invented something that changed the world.

But there are some risks we can take that don’t fall in that category. These are bad risks. We know they are wrong and dangerous to our health. God’s warned us, our parents have warned us, authorities have warned us, even our friends have warned us.

We need to distinguish between the 2 types of risk and take only the good risks in life. But the Bible teaches us that we are weak and give in easily to the bad risks which it calls Sin. That’s a bad situation! If we are struggling to avoid bad risks, only Jesus can save us from them. What does that mean? It means that with Him living inside us, He gives us His power to avoid the bad risks. The Power he showed when he died on the Cross for the whole World’s Sin. Only Jesus can do that, we can’t do it on our own.

The simple Gospel is we need to believe in Jesus and trust Him. Ask Him to help us. When we do this, He comes and lives inside us and gives us His Power to avoid bad risks in our lives. We need to know when we are “in over our heads”. My glasses cost me plenty of money to replace. There are some things in life we simply cannot afford to lose.